Bucky barely tried to match Howard’s steps. He preferred to follow in this particular circumstance. He didn’t wish to stand alongside him nor to have any sort of possibly unnecessary conversation with him. THIS Howard wasn’t someone that he felt he could connect with, at least not in any way but to apologize for what he could which wasn’t much. At worst, he figured that perhaps he could talk him into not taking that route, to not leave without security so that maybe MARIA could have survived if not both of them.
Unfortunately, no matter what happened, it was likely that Bucky would never be able to stop the Winter Soldier from anything he did which would include killing Howard Stark. Once they found themselves inside, Bucky waited until it felt appropriate to speak. “I didn’t die. When I fell.” He chose to begin where it felt made the most sense, the beginning. “Zola tried his own version of the super soldier serum on me, tried to go further too but Steve saved me before he could. That was what stopped me from dying. I lost my arm first and then my freedom. Hydra took me and they started slow because they realized no one was looking for me.” That was speculation on his part. In fact, a lot of it felt more like a dream in the first few days but eventually, he was snapped right back into reality.
Howard navigated through the streets, unsure why he was really bringing the other back to his apartment. He wasn’t only risking his safety, but Peggy’s. What if she was home? What would she say about this? Peggy was not fragile by any definition of the word, but he worried how she’d react seeing Barnes... and if Barnes was here... he couldn’t think about the possibility that maybe Steve had been found, or was brought back.
Luckily, when he let himself in, nobody was home. Which meant she might be out seeing her son and that she’d be gone for awhile (he hoped). He hadn’t even had a chance to offer the man a place to sit or... some tea, or whatever else Peggy stocked up on in the kitchen. He was already talking, sending Howard into an uncomfortable corner of his mind as he listened. Everything went back to fucking HYDRA. When he and Peggy came up with SHIELD, he had hoped... that maybe in this day and age, for example, they wouldn’t be a worry anymore. He was so wrong. That’s what he got for being optimistic.
“We didn’t think there was a chance. The way the commandos explained the fall and the setting... there shouldn’t have been a chance in hell that you survived. You’re must have offended the reaper at one point,” he tried to joke to break the tension. “Steve wasn’t the same after he came back from that mission. It took... a lot of coaxing from Peggy to get him back,” he didn’t know why he was telling the other this. But, he supposed, if he had died in front of everyone, he’d want to be reassured that people cared or something.
